I'm Sorry I Love You I'm Sorry
by HecateA
Summary: In which Leo Valdez keeps a promise, and not by half. Oneshot. House of Hades spoilers.


**First Post House-of-Hades story! That said: SPOILERS. **

**Out of all the things that could have been cannon, I wouldn't have expected it to be Leo and Calypso but you know what, I'm into it and I think that it's actually good for him. He seemed honestly into her for solid reasons. There was growth within a few chapters and asddgkjaflgjal enjoy the fanfiction.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own the PJO/HoO characters.**

**Dedication: ThatHotSexyBookWorm who is indeed hot and sexy (I assume) and fantastic (this I know). Feel better soon! **

* * *

**I'm Sorry I Love You I'm Sorry**

* * *

Calypso had said that no man found Ogyjia twice.

Leo Valdez had sworn on the River Styx that he would come back for her anyways.

And the wind told Calypso.

* * *

The sea felt the boat breaking through the waves.

The sea told the wind.

The wind whispered it to the birds.

The birds sung to Calypso.

Calypso ran to the beach and was there within seconds.

* * *

He didn't particularly want to have to wait, but he figured that he'd look pretty stupid if he hoped off the boat and ran through the waves to meet her, but lost his ride and got them both stranded all over again.

So Leo gripped the helm impatiently as Ogyjia got closer and closer.

* * *

Calypso didn't let him go for a while. She just held him and cried a bit –what was it like, seeing someone's face twice for the first time in millennia? Especially one that hadn't been expected… Leo beat magical laws, he was cool like that. Well, sort of… It was fine, she didn't have to know. Yet.

"I can't believe it," she kept saying into his ear. It sent shivers up his spine.

"I promised, didn't I? And you said no half promises, so here I am. I'd be here if I'd promised you the moon, Calypso. I swear I would."

Around sundown, she smacked herself in the forehead.

"You must be starving," she said.

"Craving grapes and bread: affirmative," Leo said. Calypso smiled.

"Anchor your ship properly and we'll go- this isn't the Argo II is it?"

Leo shook his head. "Just a little something I cooked up. I call it the _SS Break Physics._"

"But that _is _Festus."

"Oh yeah," Leo smiled. "That's my dragon. He's totally exhausted right now, but I'll introduce you two later."

"Okay," Calypso said. "I'll go get dinner ready while you secure the boat."

Leo hesitated and followed her when he left. She turned back and frowned.

"I don't really wanna… you know…"

Calypso rolled her eyes and waited for him. She even took his hand when they walked back to the cave.

They ate outside, under the orange sky and then the stars since they had a lot of catching up to do. She was hanging on his lips as he talked about everything from the raft dropping him off at Malta to the battle with Clytius to their short and only nearly disastrous trip to Athens and to the sort-of-mostly victorious battle with the giants. He was kind of nebulous about that last part.

Calypso squeezed his hand.

"I knew you would prevail,"

"You should've told us," Leo joked half-heartedly. "We got nervous."

Calypso laughed and Leo's spirits lifted.

"What about you?" He asked.

Calypso scoffed. "Hardly anything interesting, of course."

"Did that nest in the oak..?"

"Oh yes, the eggs hatched."

"That's good. Are all the baby birds alright?"

"Yes, their mother's taking care of them well." Calypso said. "But you hardly care about birds, lest they have gears in their wings."

"That's not _entirely _true," Leo said. Calypso smiled.

"Besides, you are tired. If you are still as passionate about hatchlings tomorrow morning we can talk then."

"Right," Leo said. "I _am _beat."

"I know," Calypso said. "I can tell."

"I'll go find my lean-on," Leo said getting up and stretching his arms over his head.

"Please," Calypso rolled her eyes. "There are _much _more comfortable places on the island."

* * *

At dinner Calypso held his hand as they ate yogurt, freshly bakes bread whose smell lingered in the pavilion all day, and freshly picked fruit that was so juicy and flavourful that he felt as if he'd never tasted anything before eating it.

He threw it all up after every meal, of course. But he didn't tell Calypso that.

Anyways, back to the important part. She held his hand. It was awesome, but it gave Leo head splitting migraines to concentrate. He had to focus real hard to make sure that the hand-holding jazz went on without a glitch. He did _not _like glitches at all.

That, he never regretted. That he held on to after meals.

Mostly because they rarely let go of each other's hands.

Except to tinker and garden, of course. Those two things had to happen.

* * *

Leo gave her a map of the world. He'd highlighted a few places- Houston, New York, Greece, Italy… Just to give her bearings. He'd even pinpointed where he'd been when Khione had attacked and catapulted him to the island in the first place, a lifetime ago.

"What is this?" She frowned.

"A map of the human world," Leo said. "You should pick where I'm taking you before we set sail."

Calypso's eyes brightened.

"Anywhere on this map?" She asked, looking at all the continents and countries, provinces and states, capitals and towns before her. Her options were limitless now.

"But Greece," Leo said darkly.

"Don't worry," Calypso promised. "I have no need to go back there now either."

* * *

"And that one," Calypso said as she embarked on Constellation Myth Number 248, "is Cassiopeia."

Seriously; Calypso never ran out of stories about the stars. _Plus _there were more stars on Ogyjia than on earth. It was dazzling to see.

"Cassio-what?"

"Cassiopeia," Calypso said. "Her daughter, Andromeda, was beautiful. She boasted that Andromeda was more beautiful than any demigod, any goddess even."

"Was she?"

"Was she what?"

"A demigod," Leo said. They didn't have nothing over exiled and dishonoured Titannesses, but Leo knew a bunch of pretty good looking demigods.

"No," Calypso said. "Just a mortal. It made it worst in a way. Already most of the gods were displeased about that statement, as you can imagine…"

Leo had seen gods get upset over smaller things yet.

"Cassiopeia's city was cursed," Calypso said. "A sea monster was unleashed by the gods- and the only way to stop it was…"

"To sacrifice the princess," Leo said snapping his fingers. "I've seen that movie. Also the modern version. Good stuff."

"Movie?" Calypso said.

"Yeah. Like, pictures that move with sound to tell a story," Leo tried to explain. It sounded like a _fantastic _explanation to his unbiased ears, but Calypso frowned.

"You will have to show me once we get to your world," she said. Brilliant how even a girl who didn't know what a movie was could ask someone out on a movie date better than he could.

Leo clenched his jaw and nodded in agreement. He was quiet while she told all her other stories.

* * *

"This is the one poisonous berry on the island," Calypso said pointing to a blooming bush. "I usually manage to weed it out, but they infested again- earlier in the summer, just as I was helping you build the raft."

"Oops," Leo said. "Sorry."

She kissed his cheek. "It hardly matters, does it? Just avoid it. Its poison… you'll be nauseous at best, dead at the most realistic, and in endless and immortal pain at the worst."

"Don't worry," Leo said.

"It looks a lot like those other ones you like; I just wanted to make sure that you did not eat one by mis…"

"Don't worry about it," Leo said again.

* * *

"Calypso?"

"Hmm?"

"Where are you in the stars?"

Calypso frowned.

"Well, Cassiopeia got in the stars for being cursed, right? Cursed for her stupidity too, not because some grumpy old gods were paranoid after a war. So where are you?"

"I am not in the stars, Leo," she said shaking her head.

"Oh, come on," Leo said. "You're holding out on me. You've _got _to be. You belong there."

Calypso blushed.

"I am not. I am right here, aren't I?"

"Gods are in the stars and in the world at once."

"Gods are always at more than one place," Calypso said. "I'm only on Ogyjia. For now." She smiled. He could hear her ask about various places on the map- Paris, the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, Tanzania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Lichtenburg, New Zealand, Brazil…

Leo got up and pointed out a bunch of stars.

"See it?"

"What is that constellation?" Calypso said.

"It's Calypso," Leo said. "I drew you in the stars."

She blushed intensely.

"That does not look like me," Calypso said.

"It's your smile."

"I still do not quite see it," she squinted at the night sky. Her almond eyes were cute when they squinted. Her almond eyes were cute, period.

"And you want to tell me that that pan thing looks like a bear?" Leo scoffed. Calypso brushed even more brightly.

"I would not be the kind of constellation that people will walk out of their houses and look for immediately," Calypso said.

"But once they would, they'd try to find you again and again," Leo said sadly.

"Will they all be as successful as you?"

Leo's face darkened.

"I hope not."

She frowned.

* * *

He was just coughing up the last of supper when she scared him half out of his mind.

"Are you alright?" Calypso asked, worried.

Leo jumped.

"Oh, umm, yeah," he said. "Yeah, I am. I was just… umm…"

Composting? No, that wasn't exactly somewhere that he wanted to get into…

"Did you eat the bad berries?" Calypso said.

"Yes!" Leo said seizing the excuse. "Yes, that's exactly what I was doing. I mean, what I did."

"Oh, poor you," she said quickly closing the gap between them. She put a hand on his forehead and frowned. "I'd have expected you to be warmer. Feverish, even."

"I feel feverish," Leo said.

"You feel cold to me," Calypso frowned.

"I feel feverish to me," Leo insisted.

It didn't really matter to Calypso- she asked one of her invisible servants for broth and lots of clean water to be brought to his room, and babied him all night playing at being a healer that Leo didn't really need.

* * *

She examined the map of the world furthermore.

"What is Korea?" She asked reading off a random title.

"A country in Asia," Leo said as he tinkered with Odysseus' astrolabe. The thing was in perfect shape, Odysseus was a genius, but Leo really _did _have to try to give it a laser function. "If we're going to Korea, I'm afraid I'm going to have to insist on South."

"Oh," Calypso said. "What is wrong with the North?"

"It's not nice at this time of the year," Leo said. He was too tired to explain dictatorships to her just now. Holding her hand had taken lots of energy.

"What about Egypt?" She suggested.

"Yeah, it's cool," Leo said. "They've got pyramids and giant noseless statues and stuff. You'd get a kick out of those."

"Would I? I want to go to Egypt," Calypso said. "It could be fun. Well, it will be. Traveling with you, even to the North of Korea at this time of the year, would be nice."

Leo grinned awkwardly.

Really, and he felt so unimaginably bad about it, she didn't have a choice. He was dropping her off at Camp Half-Blood before anything. She needed to connect with his friends, with Chiron, with at least one person she knew (Percy by default) before going anywhere else. Leo wished it weren't that way, he really did wish that he could take her to Switzerland (which he helped her pronounce about a thousand times between giggling and gentle mockery). He hadn't had tons of choices lately.

The one he did have, Calypso… well, he'd taken that. And he'd never regret it.

* * *

They'd been laughing and laughing about a joke on France that Leo had picked up from some of his more rowdy brothers, but now Leo wasn't laughing. Laughing felt bad- nearly like a cruel taunt.

"Is Australia nice at this time of the year?"

Leo was tapping his fingers on the table. In Morse code he was spelling out _I love you I'm sorry I love you I'm sorry I love you I'm sorry. _

"Leo?"

You should always be sorry for being in love with someone. Because sometimes, they returned the favour. And after that you could do your best, but you couldn't really control how their feelings would get hurt.

He didn't hear her.

"Leo, what about Australia?"

"What about Austria?" He said snapping out of his gaze.

Calypso looked at the map again.

"No, no. I'm fairly sure it's Austr_alia." _

"Oh," Leo said. "Yeah, that's a thing too."

Calypso chewed her lip.

"You know, I was once accused by a hero of pulling away during happy moments. He said that I was sad from within."

Leo swallowed.

"I understand what he means now," Calypso said. "When he says that someone can _look _sad from somewhere deep, deep inside of them. Except _I _pulled away because I knew that the heroes I saved would not, could not, save me. That they would never stay. Why are you sad?"

Leo hesitated, but he'd sworn one thing to himself one his crazy, stupid wish had inexplicably and miraculously been granted by the Council. If she asked him directly, Leo would not lie. Not to her, not about anything. He'd been hoping that she'd catch on- why he was cold to the touch, why he couldn't eat… She hadn't. Leo had protected her.

"The thing is…" Leo hesitated. "It's nearly for the same reason. You and I, we couldn't be… you know… _together _once we got back home."

Calypso paled. "What? Why not? Is there another girl? Some kind of..?"

"Of course not," Leo said. "You _know _that."

"I do," Calypso said softly, resting her head against his shoulder. He wanted to push her off.

_I love you I'm sorry I love you I'm sorry I love you I'm sorry. _

Leo managed to shrug her off a bit so that they could be eye to eye as they talked. "You know what you told me about how no man could find this place twice?"

"I used to think that," Calypso nodded. "But…"

"Yeah, well… It's true." Leo said. "It's absolutely true."

"But you're here," Calypso said touching his hair.

Leo swallowed.

"Yeah. That's because they never said anything about ghosts finding Ogyjia."


End file.
